Category Archives: Creativity

How Identity Came Together (A Personal Account)

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Identity is now streaming everywhere and on Bandcamp. This is how it was made.

While doing an annual year‑end review of 2024 and planning for 2025, I started jotting down ideas on my whiteboard for a new music project – things that might be fun and interesting to try.

My initial brain dump

Some ideas were based on tools I wanted to use and/or get more familiar with (Spitfire Audio’s Fragile String Evolutions, Abbey Road Strings, Abbey Road Percussion, Universal Audio’s Luna and mixing plugins, Tone Master, Superior Drummer, Omnisphere, and Dorico). Others were genres I wanted to explore (Texas guitar, Motown‑ish funk bass, gospel chords & changes, a Nine Inch Nails‑style synth piece, an acoustic piece, a Radiohead‑meets‑Soundgarden song, a guitar texture looping piece, and a long textural orchestral composition).

I started by creating an abstraction of how I imagined the album starting and finishing, with some artist references to draw from.

Initial ideas for the album contour abstraction

I then fleshed out the abstraction to get an even clearer picture of what happened in between.

Filled out the abstraction by defining each piece from start to finish.

The working title was Harvest. I gave myself three months (June 1 to August 31, 2025) to finish it. (Spoiler: that didn’t happen.) For the most part, I stayed true to these abstractions and musical sketches I put together in that first week. 

The album became Identity – nine tracks that start small and elemental (a cappella) and end huge, bombastic, ornate, and broad, with everything in between. To prepare, I listened to and studied artists I’ve long admired: Todd Rundgren’s “Pretending to Care” (for the a cappella piece); Aretha Franklin’s “Amazing Grace” (gospel); Ry Cooder, Jedd Hughes, and Lyle Lovett (that lonesome Texas guitar feeling); Joe Dart’s playing on Vulfpeck’s “Dean Town” and James Jamerson for Motown funk; Robert Fripp’s Frippertronics (guitar looping); Nine Inch Nails’ Tension 2013 tour (Pino Palladino on “Sanctified”) and their collaboration with David Bowie (“I’m Afraid of Americans”) for a hard‑hitting synth piece; Ligeti and Penderecki (aleatoric and textural ideas); and Peter Gabriel’s New Blood Orchestra versions of “Signal to Noise” and “Rhythm of the Heat” (which informed my approach to the orchestral piece).

Again, my initial timeline was more than a little optimistic – “Vantage”, the orchestral piece, took on a life of its own. It grew from the Radiohead‑meets‑Soundgarden rock song into a large symphonic piece with a notated score and full orchestral instrumentation. It had so many challenges: compositionally (many metric modulations & meter changes), technically (maxed out rendering memory in Luna), and emotionally (it seemed to never end). It was a massive undertaking.

I created numerous spreadsheets to handle project planning, tracking, and observations along the way – things to remember next time. They were invaluable in helping me to get my thoughts clarified and progress tracked. Here are some screenshots of a few of them.

Songwriting status spreadsheet

Pre-Production tracker

Chigiana-styled composition planning spreadsheet for the orchestral piece, Vantage

Production tracker for all songs

Mixing and mastering prep tracker

Below is the monthly summary of how the whole thing unfolded – the good, the bad, and the metric modulation.

2025

May – Planning & Listening Parties
I spent the first week just listening and imagining. A cappella, Texas guitar, gospel, looped/texture guitar, funk, acoustic guitar, NIN‑style synth, Radiohead‑meets‑Soundgarden, orchestral – I wanted nine distinct genres that would somehow feel like one album. The working title was Harvest. I felt inspired.

June – Songwriting Drill Downs
Structured writing sessions, daily acoustic rehearsals, and “Cafe Show & Tell” (CST) performances for my wife. The Open D piece (I-40) started to feel real.

July – A Slow Month
I dove into the ThinkSpace BBCSO course as well as an InsideTheScore composing challenge. Little direct album progress, but my skills improved.

August – Intensive Writing & Research
Deep dives into Todd Rundgren, Aretha Franklin, Robert Fripp, Ry Cooder, Jedd Hughes, Lyle Lovett, Joe Dart & Vulfpeck, Robert Fripp, Nine Inch Nails, Radio Head, Sound Garden, Peter Gabriel & New Blood Orchestra, as well as the composers Holst, Ligeti and Penderecki. Daily work on all songs in rotation. By the end of the month, I had most song structures as well as full lyrics for the Gospel and NIN pieces. “Yes!!”

September – Daily Rehearsals & Charts
Wrapped up writing of structures and lyrics. Rehearsed all songs six or seven days a week. Started doing deep‑focus rehearsals: Angel section by section for 50 minutes, Fields and Gospel for 30 each, etc.. Lead sheets in Dorico underway.

October – Charts, CST & Logic Templates
Finished charts for Angel, Gospel, and RadioGarden. Restrung all guitars. Created Logic template files for every song – tempo, meters, markers, chord track. Continued performing at CSTs.

November – Production Begins
Recorded scratch tracks, primary guitar parts, and vocals. Re‑amped Fields through my pedalboard – “sounds amazing!” Also added more Spitfire libraries, UAD plugins, and Superior Drummer SDX to my system.

December – Vantage Takes Over
Everything came to a halt due to metric modulation and orchestration issues for Vantage. Eventually figured it out, after losing a lot of momentum. Then completed notation of Vantage – 2nd verse, chorus, strings, bridge, outro, transition. “Made significant progress – feeling good about the piece again.” 

2026

January – Orchestral Scoring & Logic Transition
Exported Dorico MIDI to Logic. Assigned articulations for every instrument. Fixed tempo errors where “.500” had gone missing. Discovered that Horns 1‑4 share samples (legato nightmare). Used Tim Davies’ approaches for string and woodwind arrangements – spread out arpeggios became a lifesaver.

February – Articulation Hell → Breakthrough
Created SHORTS and LONGS track stacks. Then the workflow adjustment that saved me: Humanisation → Quantisation (40%) → Copy to SHORTS → Re‑assign articulation → Delay offset. Applied to every instrument. The result? “Can’t express how relieved I feel … sounds so much better.” I rendered virtual instruments to audio and never looked back.

March – Vocals, Melodyne & First Luna Mix
Learned Melodyne (YouTube and Groove3). Started mixing in Luna, with “The Gospel” being the first song. Discovered clipping before the second chorus – a poorly edited comp region. But then: hardware Manley Voxbox on lead vocal. Huge difference. My vocal recipe became: clip gain → Melodyne → Voxbox → parallel Distressor → Shadow Hills + Pultec. Blackbox on the master bus – “sounds amazing”.

April – Album‑Wide Mix Prep
Mixed Angel, Fields, X9, Us, I‑40, Freedom, and Disintegration in Luna. Built a repeatable template. Added to my plug‑in cheat sheet: AMS doubling, Cooper Delay (default for widening), Oceanway in reverb mode.

May – Vantage Deep Mix, Mastering & Burnout
DeepSeek helped me generate tables for tape machines, console emulations, summing, reverbs, and delays. Then I created a Mix Processing Bus – all submasters → processing bus → trim bus. This let me keep my tone while hitting -6dB peak for mastering. Vantage went through multiple iterations. I was exhausted. I made a Plan B (only Adaptive Limiter) and a Plan A (full Ozone processing). Plan A sounded better. 

June – Submission & Release
June 1st: Submitted the audio files to CDBaby. June 5‑8: I went back and updated Vantage Dorico score with timpani, bass drum, piatti, tubular bells, tam tams. June 9: CDBaby passed inspection – album appeared on Apple Music, Amazon Music, Spotify and other streaming services. June 11: Set up Bandcamp release. Announced album release on my website.

Things I Want to Remember for Next Time

  • Abstractions for everything! – for albums, songs, lyrics, arrangements, mixes, mastering.
  • Parallel processing – work on all songs in rotation. Prevents getting stuck.
  • Keeping a project log was super helpful. Often I lost track of what I did and/or when I did something and having the log helped to put things in perspective.
  • Whiteboard word dumps – adjectives and emotional arcs before writing lyrics.
  • Modeling after other songs (e.g. Afraid of Americans) was super useful
  • Songwriting Status Table before notation, huge help!
  • Created Chigiana-like spreadsheet to identify everything I might want to do in Vantage. Definitely helped to give clarity.
  • While notating challenging parts, determine rhythms first then add pitches
  • Having a piano reduction for Vantage was key, particularly for the arpeggios in the WWs.
  • Having the Chord Track in Logic was super helpful, even just for reference while playing parts in live.
  • Rehearsals: 1) Extended focus (repeat one section at a time until locked) 2) Going over all songs for a couple of months was huge
  • Remembering Confidence on opening line is everything
  • Performing @ CST (Cafe Show & Tell) – weekly creative sharing. Uncovered every blind spot.
  • Re-Amping with two amps rules (Tone Master + Landau = Amazing)
  • Stereo pair mic’ing for room tones worked beautifully (watch for positioning and phase coherence)
  • Tim Davies approaches – string & woodwind arrangements, spread out arpeggios.
  • Shorts/Longs + delay offset – essential for realistic sample orchestras.
  • Remember to keep original MIDI tracks with Virtual Instruments removed after bouncing to audio. Hide, but keep them around.
  • Clip gain to -18dB RMS on all audio tracks.
  • Melodyne – superior to FlexPitch. Sibilant tool is a lifesaver.
  • Hardware Voxbox – massively better than software. Use it.
  • Parallel compression on acoustic guitar is awesome! Loved the Fairchild 770 on Us (Time Constant set to 5, cranked the input gain and the threshold so that -10dB of compression was applied.
  • Using different Studer A800 machines and tape formulations/setting per instrumentation group made a huge difference to create space EQ wise. See project log for specific settings.
  • DeepSeek was invaluable in figuring out which tape machines, tape, & settings to use in Vantage (orchestra & rock instrumentation). Also gave really helpful guidance in delays and reverbs to use on all instruments other than the vocals (see project log for specific settings). Really great.
  • Blackbox HG-2: “Mix bus 1” preset is pretty excellent on just about anything
  • Other plug-in mentions: AMS vocal doubling, Cooper Delay (default) for widening and giving presence particularly synth bass, and Oceanway in reverb mode on a send
  • Mix Processing Bus – submasters → processing bus → trim bus to -6dB. Decouples tone from delivery level.
  • Plan A / Plan B – always have a safety net. Saved me multiple times.
  • 96kHz workflow – record/mix at 96kHz, then convert: 24/96 → 24/44.1 → 16/44.1 with POW‑r #2 dithering.
  • The making/creating is the prize/goal. I’ll never be this intimate with these songs again.

What to Avoid (or Do Better)

  • Never skip the metronome during rehearsals – even if not recording to click. My timing suffered.
  • AI isn’t always great at doing musical analysis and often makes mistakes on advanced usage of music and audio apps.
  • Need a way to circle back to/review original intentions – e.g., The Gospel drifted from its original meaning. A one‑page abstraction for the lyrics might have caught it.
  • Create a tempo track before layered recording – I‑40 drifted because I had no click.
  • Need to remember to voice lead better when writing on guitar and transferring to other instruments
  • Practice in the recording setup – outside noise and unfamiliar mic position ruined takes.
  • Hit a roadblock w/ orchestrating Vantage. I think I was making it too important.
  • Don’t let burnout drive decisions – when exhausted, make a Plan B, rest, then do Plan A properly.

Identity is now available on all streaming platforms (such as Spotify), or you can also listen to it on Bandcamp.

Echos & Edges: Revisiting a Song Collection from 2016

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At the start of 2025, I decided to revisit a set of songs I originally wrote in March 2016. Back then, the writing process was unexpectedly fast and cohesive—about nine songs came together in a single week, including melodies, chord progressions, lyrics, and charts. This was a stark contrast to my earlier experiences, where writing music felt difficult and slow, often yielding only a few scattered ideas over the course of a year.

The turning point came from a simple question my wife asked: “Why can’t you make an album in a week?” At first I looked at her with an expression of “you don’t know what you are asking…” but stopped and really considered “why can’t I”? I decided to act as if writing music was easy. That mindset shift resulted in a burst of creativity, and it’s a technique I’ve continued to use on subsequent projects, including Music Sketches, Realworld Beatcamp, Equinox, my Berklee degree, the Chigiana Film Scoring Intensive, and more.

Songwriting Process

I made early handwritten charts and lyric sheets for each song, which proved essential—without them, these songs likely wouldn’t have been recorded. While I didn’t document the process step-by-step, I know that once ideas started flowing, they came quickly. My daily studies of scales, chord scales, and resources like the Songwriting Sourcebook often sparked chord progressions and melodies. For lyrics, I relied on timed free-writing sessions followed by focused work on the song’s theme.

At the end of 2024, my wife and I committed to making 2025 a year of personal projects, which prompted me to finally bring these songs to life.

Arranging and Notation

For lead sheets, I used Dorico (which I absolutely love to work with). Its logical workflow made the process efficient and clear, particularly when working with lyrics. When I encountered challenging syncopated rhythms, I turned to targeted ear training with Ear Master, which has improved my overall musicianship.

Lead – Don’t Say GoodbyeDownload

Rehearsal Approach

Early on, I practiced songs in a freeform way and only used proper recording setups on the day of tracking, which was stressful and rarely yielded satisfactory results. I changed my approach to rehearse with a microphone, audio processing, and a click or drum track from the start of each week. Recording rehearsals and focusing on looping tricky sections helped clarify arrangements and improved the feel of each song.

Recording Workflow

Before recording, I made sure to define the essentials for each song: key, meter, tempo, and rhythms. I found an effective microphone position for recording guitar and vocals simultaneously—placing a condenser mic at shoulder height, with the back pointed toward the right corner of the room.

I used templates in both Luna and Logic, which sped up the technical side of recording. This was my first project entirely at a 96kHz sample rate, which struck a good balance between clarity and manageable file sizes. I also used Logic’s chord track feature and recorded the click to an audio track, automating its volume to minimize headphone bleed during softer passages.

While I enjoyed recording in Luna, I returned to Logic for its strength in working with MIDI in case I ever wanted to add any additional instruments. The songs are ready for further development if I choose to revisit them.

Mixing and Mastering

All songs were mixed in a single Luna session using consistent signal routing and templates. I relied on plug-ins like UA Voxbox for de-essing and Brainworx SSL 9000J for clarity on both vocals and guitar. Parallel compression, distortion, and reverb (using Capitol Chambers) added depth, while UA’s Studio D provided stereo width. The mix bus chain included SSL G Bus Compressor, Fairchild 670, ATR-102, and an 1176 used as a limiter.

Final mastering was done in Logic, with level matching and Ozone for polish.

Cafe Show & Tell (CST)

My wife and I created a weekly “Cafe Show & Tell” to share the progress we were making on our respective projects. These regular deadlines provided accountability and helped us stay on track. For my project, in addition to rehearsing and recording a new song, I performed two songs each week—one that was recorded and one for the following week.

Performing for someone else, even a close partner, felt very different from solo practice and highlighted the importance of preparation. Small details, like avoiding shirts with sleeve buttons (which can create unwanted noise), became apparent. Warming up 30 minutes before performing, closing my mouth when not singing, and pushing through mistakes were all practical lessons learned.

We also had weekly review meetings every Sunday night to help us reflect on progress and plan next steps, that made a significant difference in maintaining momentum.

This project has reinforced the value of mindset, preparation, and incremental progress in creative work. Revisiting these songs has been both a technical and personal journey, and the process itself has become as meaningful as the finished recordings.

The album is now available on all streaming platforms (such as Spotify), but you can also listen to it here on Bandcamp.

“Nets”

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(Continuing on from the “Welcome to Real World” post…)

Before even meeting my collaborator for Beatcamp @ RealWorld 2018 we received an assignment from the camp director Marc Langsman: select an image from the National Geographic archive that would serve as the basis of inspiration for the song that we would produce during the workshop. 

At first this felt a bit daunting, as there are well over 9.3 million images in the archive, but I held the attitude that I was going to find it quickly and that I’d know it when I saw it. Within 10 minutes I came across this fantastic photograph taken by Oliver Apicella:  

To me, it said everything about what we would be doing for the project: casting our nets, hoping to catch the big fish – inspiration.

Fortunately my collaborator, Patrick Hill, agreed and suddenly we were working together in the same direction. (Great idea, Marc!) We also agreed to create a completely new song, just for the camp and that everything would be done from scratch.  

From there the song came together rather quickly. We had the chord progressions, riffs, melodies, lyrics, arrangement and drums all done on the first day of the camp. The next day we built the song up by tracking bass, guitars, piano and vocals. The final day of the camp we recorded a violin solo, edited the tracks, mixed it all down and gave it the name “Nets”.

You can listen to the entire BeatCamp at Real World 2018 album on Spotify or iTunes/Apple Music.

Aside from having a dream come true (getting to make music at Real World) the camp taught and reminded me of quite a few things:


1) To stay focused on the goal and feel as if it is already done. I’ve been doing this with great success for a couple years now and it helped a number of times during the camp. Particularly given the time constraints and the ever-present temptation to try too many things.

2) Strive to hear my inner voice even in the midst of chaos/activity all around, as well as differing opinions. This doesn’t mean “ignore everyone else”, it simply means don’t forsake my own intuition/vision just because of what’s going on around me.

3) Go with the path of least resistance. E.g. don’t insist that I do something myself if someone else can do it better/quicker. Early on in the camp I made a conscious decision to involve the studio musicians as much as possible. Normally I would opt to do everything myself but here we had a small army of professional musicians/engineers/producers ready and willing to help out. I realized that I should make the most of this opportunity, particularly if I wanted the track to be finished on time.

4) Be open to seeing how someone else might do something. Originally my plan for mixing was to do a first pass myself and then get feedback as to what should be fixed. Then I had the thought “I pretty much know what I am going to do and how it will sound, why not see how a pro would do it”. So I asked the Head Engineer Oli Jacobs if he wouldn’t mind handling it while I looked over his shoulder and he said “sure”. Turns out that this was one of the highlights of the entire camp for me. It was fantastic being able to see his workflow, his choices/decisions and being able to ask him questions as to why. He was super helpful, responsive and kind throughout the process. 

Thanks again to everyone involved in making “Nets” a reality. Here are the credits:

Glenn Schoonmaker (Composer), Patrick Hill (Composer), Nicole Fermie (Vocals), AD Chivers (Vocals), Howard Gill (Drums), Paul Whalley (Bass), Graham Kearns (Guitar), Jonathan Page (Piano), TiiT Kikas (Violin), Oli Middleton (Recording Engineer), Oli Jacobs (Mix Engineer), Tim Oliver (Mastering Engineer), Marc Langsman (BeatCamp Director), Rena Biring (Beatcamp Organizer) 

Where you least expect it…

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As mentioned in a previous post I feel that inspiration can happen anywhere and from just about anything, if we are open to it.

I had been wanting to write a new instrumental song for a while. I wanted it to be melodic, powerful and totally unique from what I had done before. I imagined it as being done and had the thought that before I knew it I’d have something cool. A little while later this magazine showed up:

At first I didn’t notice anything special or unusual about the magazine. It was nicely designed and well written but nothing stood out to me. Right before I was about to put it into recycling the orange tape on the back of the guitar headstock caught my eye:

I realized that it was probably the tuning of the guitar, a tuning that I had never used before. I grabbed my guitar, set it to the pitches indicated and within a couple hours had two new songs that were totally unique from anything I had done before. All from something that I was about to throw away.

I love it when stuff like this happens but looking back at it now makes me wonder just how often this type of thing could be happening. Where the seeds of what I want could be right in front of me and I just don’t see it.

Hans Zimmer

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Last year I took the Hans Zimmer Film Scoring course on Masterclass.com and really enjoyed it. While there wasn’t too much technical information in this class it had plenty in the way of mindset and approach that Hans used in various real world situations, which helped him to become one of the most prolific and successful film composers of our time.

I particularly enjoyed doing the assignments, creating compositions based on specific limitations/requirements. My Music Sketch #55 “Perception” was based on the following assignment:

“Think about one of your favorite directors. Find an interview in which he/she talks about the making of one of his/her lms. Use this as a jumping o point to create your own version of a score that’s informed by how the director talks about their intentions behind the film. How can you translate the director’s approach to telling the story into a score that helps serve that narrative?”

The director I chose was Terry Gilliam and the movie interview was about his film 12 Monkeys. The key point I got from the conversation (which inspired the song) was this:

“We seem to be inundated with information. It’s hard to know what the real stuff is, which is the stuff that counts, I think that the hardest thing in modern society is to know what to listen to and what not to.”

Lyrical

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I used to really struggle with writing lyrics. It felt so important, with a such need to be significant that I usually stopped before I began.

Along with “starting with the end in mind” I’ve been using a cool technique that I learned in a songwriting workshop that Richard Adoradio and Kenny Schick put together back in 2006.

The process is simple. Get a timer and free-write without stopping for 2-3 minutes. When I say free, I mean completely free. Write whatever comes into your mind and don’t stop until the timer goes off. What you write for these 2-3 minutes does not matter. The point is to get into the creative mode and to get past the inner critic. Don’t filter, don’t analyze, don’t evaluate. Just write.

Once the timer goes off, work on the actual song lyrics can begin. The “stage has been set” for focusing on a theme and what feelings are to be conveyed. Rarely do I use anything that I came up with during the free-write. It was just a means to getting ready for the real stuff.

Now days I can usually finish a song’s lyrics in one sitting, as long as I stay open to the idea of it being done.

Thanks to Kenny and Richard for the great tip!

Start with the End

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“Start with the End in Mind” was a phrase that I heard from time to time over the years. I thought it sounded good but I had no idea just how useful it could be when applied. It wasn’t until I started working on the Music Sketches project at the end of 2016/beginning of 2017 that I found out first hand what it could mean.

Up until then, writing songs had been a difficult and arduous experience. I was lucky if I got one whole song together in a given year. Then I tried applying this idea of starting with the end in mind, as if the song was already done and that the process was easy and (dare I say) fun. I just focused on the idea and feeling of what it would be like if I had already finished the song. Before I knew it I would have a new idea which would lead to another new idea to another and so on. Within a few months I had over 50 song ideas recorded. These were full song ideas with chord progressions, melodies, grooves, hooks and sometimes lyrics and vocal parts all recorded and posted on YouTube.

It was a huge realization for me, that all those years I had been the starting with an end of difficulty, confusion and futility. Good to know.

Inspiration

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I love the feeling of being inspired. That feeling of possibility is so fun, free and full of hope, hope for something new. It can happen in an instant, in any number of ways and can become the basis of a whole new direction in one’s life.

In the past I thought inspiration was something that just happened to us if we were lucky and that we needed to really treasure those moments. But now I feel it’s a choice. I can invite inspiration by being ready for it and welcoming it through seeing it as a choice.

I get to choose how I feel in any given situation. That is the one thing in life that I can control. In the past I mostly felt things in a reactionary way, responses learned from previous life experiences and assumptions. Lately, I’ve been trying to ask myself on a regular basis “how do I want to feel right now?”.

Right now, I chose inspiration.

Creativity

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I love making new songs. I love the feeling of getting a new idea and imagining where it can go. Often I’ll get next inspired through studying a scale or chord voicing. It can be one or two notes that triggers something in my mind that that will later blossom into a fully formed song. The biggest factor in this process is in me being open to “hearing” the idea in the first place. It’s almost like having a net out in the water to catch fish, but this net is in my mind, open to catch ideas.